The Prime Minister

Oct 17, 2024 10:23 PM

Author:Peter Hennessy

The Prime Minister

In The Prime Minister: the Office and its Holders since 1945, Peter Hennessy explores the formal powers of the Prime Minister and how each incumbent has made the job his or her own.

Drawing on unparalleled access to many of the leading figures, as well as the key civil servants and journalists of each period, he has built up a picture of the hidden nexus of influence and patronage surrounding the office.

From recently declassified archival material he reconstructs, often for the first time, precise prime ministerial attitudes towards the key issues of peace and war. He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945, from Clement Atlee and Winston Churchhill to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and proposes a new specification for the premiership as it enters its fourth century.

'I really can't praise it too highly: a tremendous achievement ... an instant classic'

  Antony Jay, author of Yes, Prime Minister

'Supersedes everything else written on the subject. If I were Tony Blair, I'd keep a copy by my bedside'

  Adam Sisman, Observer

'A must ... far and away the best account of the office of the First Lord of the Treasury, its history, powers and practice, and an independent assessment of the occupants of Downing Street since the Second World War'

  Tony Benn, Spectator

'Important and extremely readable ... Hennessy's portrait of the Blair premiership is fascinating ... a major contribution to our understanding of how we are governed'

  Peter Oborne, Sunday Express

Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Among many other books, he is the author of The Secret State, Whitehall and Never Again: Britain 1945-1951, which in 1993 won the NCR Award for Non-Fiction and the Duff Cooper Prize.

Reviews

Supersedes all previous accounts. It is the sort of masterly biography that only a first-rate historian can write

—— David Cannadine , Observer Books of the Year

The Hitler biography for the 21st century ... cool, judicious, factually reliable and intelligently argued ... Kershaw triumphantly succeeds in showing that Hitler's rise to supreme power depended not just on his own talents, nor on the nature of German society, but on the interaction of the two

—— Richard Evans , Sunday Telegraph

One of the major historical biographies of our times ... Kershaw has written a dazzlingly lucid interpretation of the central dynamics of the Nazi regime which draws on a wide new range of sources and expertly manages a huge cast of accomplices ... a riveting read

—— Jackie Wullschlager , Financial Times, Best Biographies of the Year

His analysis of Hitler's extraordinary character has the fascination of a novel, but he places his struggle and rise in the context of meticulously researched history ... Deeply disturbing. Unforgettable

—— A.N. Wilson , Daily Mail

A sane, erudite, moral and intellectually honest biography of the 20th century's most destructive politician. Every page is focused on the historical question we would prefer to forget: how did it happen?

—— Ruth Scurr , The Times

This new biography is of profound importance and will ... quickly establish itself as the standard work on Hitler and his regime

—— Thomas Childers , Boston Globe

Reading A. N. Wilson's The Victorians provides ongoing pleasure in handsomely researched, beautifully written prose about an age which we have come to think disparagingly. We thought wrong

—— Clement Freud , Mail on Sunday

The Victorians was one of the books that gave me greatest pleasure during the past year... A brilliant evocation of an age

—— Ian McIntyre , The Times

Rarely have author and subject been found in such deep and contented harmony... Wilson's tour de force

—— Robert McCrum , Observer

Wilson's panoramic survey is the best attempt so far to describe and explain what was happening in that fascinating time

—— Literary Review

The Victorians finds Wilson writing at the height of his powers

—— The Independent

I can't recall a history book furnishing so many laughs en route ... The Victorians is a work of scholarship, a labour of love, a persusasive polemic

—— John Sutherland , Mail on Sunday

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